Nine months after shaking up the city’s tax enforcement leadership and collection processes, the Nutter administration continues to make modest but measurable gains in the collection of taxes, chipping away at…

Philadelphia's City Council approved a top-to-bottom overhaul of the city's troubled property tax collection system Thursday, the latest in a series of state and local reforms designed to curb Philadelphia's worst-in-the-nation…

This is the transcript from the live chat session with journalist Patrick Kerkstra and University of Pennsylvania urban economist, Kevin Gillen at noon on Wednesday. The subject was “Ravaged By Neglect,…

In many ways, and for many years, Philadelphia has failed to implement a practical and effective strategy for collecting delinquent property taxes and putting vacant land and blighted buildings into productive…

The causes, costs, and effects of property tax delinquency - detailed in this week's PlanPhilly/Inquirer investigative series - are staggering. Here's a by-the-numbers breakdown of the city's complex tax delinquency issues…

For decades, City Hall has been an indifferent steward of Philadelphia’s most elemental resource: the land itself.
The result has been low collection rates on real estate taxes, inaccurate property assessments,…

The 800 block of South 19th Street flows through the heart of southwest Center City, the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood known, alternatively, as the Graduate Hospital area (G-Ho) and South of South.…

The 2100 block of North 9th Street—between Diamond and Susquehanna, just northeast of Temple University—looks as though it’s being eaten alive. Between the still-standing, three-story brick houses, conspicuous patches of empty…

Philadelphia's decades-long neglect of property tax collections has been a disaster for public schools, the city budget, and typical taxpaying homeowners.
But the system does have its advantages for low-rent landlords,…